You should ask Vegas fans how they feel about Fleury. Because that was the big issue... do they wish they didn't consider their future goaltending situation and kept Fleury into his 40s or spent cap elsewhere and won a cup?
Ask Tampa fans about Anton Stralman. I recall Leafs fans upset he was suddenly this great #2 in Tampa helping them get to the final in 2015, then they let him go right before their cup victories? Are they upset they didn't show him loyalty?
The loyalty you're talking about is why teams often don't stay champions repeatedly and usually get old and bad after cup wins if they give it out. I mean, do you want Marner to get a 12+million extension for loyalty and what he's done?
There’s some “inside game” to the Fleury thing which I almost never see brought up in the forums but I always hear pundits and hockey blogs land on when they give the topic a full walkthrough.
First, that part that I know I saw: the Knights were playing very hesitant with MAF in net after his gaffe cost them game 2(?) against Montréal. They didn’t straighten up until Lehner was in for only game 4 (the only game they won against the Habs) and then they handed it back to MAF for game 5, trusting him with the task of winning 3 straight, which he didn’t do.
As for the part that doesn’t get brought up often enough, he was asked by KM if he would be amenable to a trade, to which he allegedly gave a reluctant yes - as is his right.
The contentiousness comes in when his agent, Allen Walsh, would overplay the possibility of Fleury immediately retiring when discussing trade options with other teams, salting the deal and adding friction to negotiations on the VGK/Fleury’s agent side.
If one considers only how the individual performance of one goalie was a common denominator in the 4 lost games of a series that only went five, they made the right move.
I’m not saying this to downplay VGK’s aggressiveness. Just adding the part that gets left out of one of the more high profile moves Vegas has made which often gets called a 100% dick move on Vegas’ part. While Suzuki’s the most notable exception, I don’t really have to squint to see Marchessault, Fleury, Pacioretty and Stephenson all as potentials for diminishing returns - even as losing Marchessault in particular still pisses me off a bit.
Bold acquisitions + willingness to step from underneath a “loyalty logjam” a season or two early = “Evil Empire narrative.”